Tattling: SF Opera Boheme

Why I fled my dress circle seat, paid for by me, at intermission:

• To the lady to my immediate left: I know that the seats are tiny and there's no room, but please try not to elbow your neighbors every ten minutes or so. I know that I was not slopping over into your space. Please keep your elbow out of mine.
• To the ladies behind me: if you need to chat after the music starts, I can recommend any number of fine recordings of La Boheme for you to chat through....in the privacy of your living rooms.

I fled to orchestra standing room, and a friend very kindly offered me his unfilled companion seat, but Boheme is not that long, and yes, I would have stood rather than deal with more audience misbehavior.

I have had different people to my left throughout the season, and this is the first trouble I have had with that spot, but I'm pretty sure the ladies behind me were there at a different opera, also chatting away. They did not respond to being shushed, either. Next time, perhaps I will inform an usher, or leave an anonymous note, or something. I admit that I should have politely said something to the woman on my left about her elbow.

Not exactly an aside: the seating at the opera house is awful in every section. In the balcony and dress circle, the seats are tiny and the leg room absurd. In the orchestra, the seats are about an inch from the ground and vary in size. San Francisco Ballet told Janos Gereben a while back that they were fund-raising to replace the seating, and I cannot wait, though if the number of seats is to be preserved, I don't know how they can improve things other than by raising the seat height in the orchestra.

Expanding the Audience

The Boston Symphony Orchestra is taking a practical step toward expanding the audience. Having gotten the message that high ticket prices are a big barrier to attendence by young people, they're going to offer many, many discount tickets:

The Boston Symphony Orchestra will offer $20 concert tickets to patrons under the age of 40 to BSO concerts for the remainder of the 2008-2009 Symphony Hall season, thanks to a generous contribution by an anonymous underwriter who will pay (subsidize) the difference between the full and discounted ticket prices.  Four thousand $20 tickets, normally priced from $29 to $115, will be made available to more than 45 Boston Symphony concerts throughout the remainder of the season.

I know some of you out there are convinced that the audience is old and getting older all the time, but read what Matthew Guerrieri had to say about this before proclaiming that the sky has fallen. Hint: absolute versus relative.

Audience Behavior

Dear Couple in the Balcony,

It's true that you were in the last occupied row of the balcony at First Congregational Church last night, so perhaps it was reasonable for you to think you wouldn't attract any attention. When I first caught a glimpse of you, I wondered if someone had had a medical emergency requiring mouth-to-mouth resucitation. But no, a few glances in your direction during the Zelenka's many solo passages revealed that you were smooching, early and often.

Perhaps you forgot about the chorus, or thought we'd have our heads so deep in the score that we'd never notice what you were up to. I'm just glad you kept your clothes on and your hands visible. 

Yours truly,

An Alto

Turnout

(Bear with me, because despite what you're thinking, this is going to turn into a music posting. Really, it is.)

The boys at FiveThirtyEight.com, my favorite polling analysts, noted today that African Americans made up 13% of the turnout in yesterday's historic election, up from 11% in recent presidential elections. You don't have to think too hard to figure out why: the presence of an African American on the Democratic ticket.

Here's something I left out of my recent review of guest conductor William Eddins's excellent concert at the Berkeley Symphony: I saw a noticeable number of African Americans at the concert, more than I can remember seeing at past Berkeley Symphony concerts that I've attended. And at opera performances with soprano Hope Briggs, whether at San Francisco or Festival Opera, it's same story. And at Appomattox last year, where several African American singers had roles, and where the story was, to say the least, important to African Americans. And at The Bonesetter's Daughter, the crowd of Chinese-Americans.

Moral of the story: Diversity of talent also improves the diversity - and size - of the audience.

At the Symphony

At a San Francisco Symphony concert a few weeks ago, I got to thinking about audiences, musicians, and composers. (Read the review of that concert here.)

Let's start with composers and audiences. This concert featured the SFS premiere of John Adams's Naive and Sentimental Music, a heroically-scaled, exciting, and deeply moving work. Adams lives in Berkeley, and so he was on hand for the concert. He spoke about himself and the piece, and the Symphony played musical examples.

This is a great way to set up the audience to listen carefully to the music, and it's especially useful and important when it's new music. Not that Adams is especially difficult, but every audience contains people who are resistant to new or 20th century music. At the SFS, music director Michael Tilson Thomas introduces music from the podium fairly often. He's articulate and charming and knows how to sell music to an audience.

But there was a missed opportunity at the Adams concert - a chance to get feedback from the audience. This could be done in so many different ways. There must be a room at Davies where audience members could meet with the composer, conductor, and some of the orchestra musicians during the intermission or after the concert. Speight Jenkins, general manager of the Seattle Opera, is available for questions and discussion after almost every one of their performances.

The programs might contain feedback forms on which the audience could ask questions - the composer, conductor, or an orchestra member could answer these at the end of the concert. I can just imagine some of the questions: "Principal Flutist, how did you learn that opening solo and how do you stay in tune with the first oboe?" "Mr. Conductor, how the heck do you keep track of where you are?" "Mr. Composer, do you use the music-editing program Sibelius?" "Mr. Composer, why does your music hurt my ears?" "Ms. Violinist, how come you scowled all the way through? Don't you like that piece?" (I'll come back to that last question in a bit.)

Greg Sandow and the Pittsburgh Symphony have started what sounds like a great program to get the audience to talk back. Believe it or not, I was thinking about this subject before Greg's post appeared. So perhaps this subject is in the air just now.

Then again, there was the audience itself. Some of its members didn't know how to behave. I heard quiet chatter here and there right up to - and even past - the first downbeat of the first two movements of the Adams. This happens all the time at the opera, where I once heard talk well into the overture to Eugene Onegin. It's as if people think they're in their livings rooms watching a DVD. They can't distinguish between a formal and informal occasion any more. I've come to believe that the "Please turn off all cell phones, pagers, and watch alarms" announcements at the symphony and opera need to include "and please do not talk once the lights go down and the conductor comes out."

I spent some time looking around at the audience during the Adams. It's a dynamic piece; there are places in it where I can imagine getting up and dancing, if only there were a dance floor handy. I respond physically to that kind of music and sometimes move in time to it. I smile a lot when I'm enjoying a piece. I know the look on my face changes constantly in relation to what I'm hearing.

Everyone I could see in the audience looked serious, very, very serious. I'm not sure if they were simply reacting very differently to the Adams than I was, or if they were concentrating hard to take in a new work or if they just think they should not be displaying pleasure or other emotions openly while listening to "serious" music. I don't understand this - music is a sensual pleasure, from the sheer beauty of much of what we hear to the emotions it triggers in us to how we react to the sheer physical force of a giant orchestra.

But maybe they were taking their cues from the orchestra. From where I sat, it looked as though conductor Alan Gilbert was having a great time. He danced all over the podium and swayed constantly with the beat. Of the orchestra members I could see, only principal violinist Geraldine Walther and associate principal cellist Peter Wyrick, who played first chair in the Adams, looked as if they were having fun. Everyone else looked just like the audience - very serious and very, very focussed on counting and playing a complex new piece. (Walther and Wyrick always look as if they're enjoying themselves!)

I have to wonder if this contributes to the hard sell of classical music to a new audience. Rock, jazz, and pop musicians get to move; they get to dance. No one thinks it's odd if a jazz pianist sings along with her playing, but Glenn Gould's moaning or Toscanini's singing along on his opera recordings are considered by many to be bad form or even mildly embarrassing. But I can't imagine that anyone goes into playing music of any kind for a living unless they love the music and act of playing. I wish more of them would show that love publicly. After all, there I am having a good time at the symphony. Musicians get to have fun too.